


We are all stories in the end

by Rose_Violettt



Category: Candyman (1992), The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, F/M, but it wouldn't be a fanfic if were crazy, i know is crazy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Violettt/pseuds/Rose_Violettt
Summary: Steve receive a new proposal for a new book, but about a new real case that's request the attention of Nell, most of the protection of her brother.
Relationships: Eleanor "Nell" Crain & Steven Crain
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

There are various types of ghosts and various types of hauntings. They could know that, but experiencing, feeling them, having something that makes them connected, are different things. These are stories that she may have heard during the years before her death, when she also had her reasons for being haunted. Stories that his brother would write in addition to the ones he wrote about his family. They can be just stories and others can have their truth background spread in a real context - certain contexts she is unable to understand. But these "others" can have that spark of abnormality. They are framed in special cases that propagate the belief in the supernatural - as it propagated in it when it became more of a story than what makes Hill House haunted.

She became part of the story once again, one that had an open ending over 25 years ago and rooted in the family. Isn't that what your mother told you? We are stories in the end - or was it for your older sister in her first direct contact with death? We become stories and every time someone tells these stories, it's as if we are still here ... for them.

Stories like that happen all over the world, she started to understand better when she came close to one of them in search of a closed ending and, later, for the protection of her siblings. But it didn't come with a force like that of your brothers' last night at the House. On one night in Chicago she allowed herself to dance again, as she danced on another night that for her did not last long, but that time, in confetti, was actually three years.

When she left the House she did it in a short time. On important dates, in whispers and emotions that he shared with his twin, in seeing the family alive, rising, believing and being kind to each other. She was so homesick and so proud. Her father was also proud of her, the mother was proud of everyone while there was still that determination within her. A stubbornness that the House planted on the fertile ground that Olivia's mind was alive. Hugh was enough to satisfy her and his daughter was enough to take care, even if from a distance, of her brothers. There was no without. So it was a surprise and a fear to know the next destination of the older (alive) Crain. 

For a time, he considered it a concern that came from Luke and shared with her. Over time she began to feel, like a hunch of something about to happen and orbiting near her, teasingly distant to keep her anxious. She felt it while residing in the lonely Hill House, which in addition to death was not so lonely, sneaking around in its corridors, at tea parties with Abigail, seeing figures that were not shown to her - from other souls who were in her own time and many others. Now and then she meets another resident, most of them kind to each other in the same place, and her mother was happy. But Steve has a new book to write about another supernatural story and it will be in Cabrini Green, Chicago.

There was a spark of abnormality that Luke felt and that Shirley dreamed of. She had a bad dream, but there was no Steve there. There was her. ''Do you think there is something... You know''. Theo stared at Shirley for a while, because the answer was obvious. 

They were in an empty, dark neighborhood with no definite definition of their size. Out of his field of vision and out of the reach of light from nowhere, it stretched out until only darkness remained. A huge building rose up ahead, humming like a weed. She was far from him, in the middle of an open field. Looking back she sees Shirley static and looking back. It was not intended to enter their dream, sometimes their appearances were not, they just saw it from one hour to the next, unleashing that gift under the skepticism accumulated over the years. It was longing and longing, and they never left. Much less when they knew where she really was.

Shirley was in pajamas and hoarsely, "Would Nell have anything to do with this?" ''Nellie? I don't know, I didn't see her'' - in a short time inaudible from the tinnitus. She looked ahead to the beehive building and pulled them out of that dream before the bees took them too.

She didn't quite know what happened next, but she knew, for sure, that she called her brothers. Did you have excuses for not believing in ghosts and now many reasons to believe that they exist, existed at Hill House and, why not, exist elsewhere? ''It seems that there always is, for us''. ''We've had a lot of that, don't you think?'' Theo had his point and reinforced what Shirley had in mind. ''We should talk to him''. 

Her mother was still calm, but she noticed his concern. Her father gave her a look and she returned it. Nothing that she couldn't handle there. Even if something inside her found reason to doubt. I'll be fine. I don't really want to get involved in this project. As the days went by, some quick and others that took time to get dark, the reasons became more convincing, enough for her not to risk it. It doesn't seem right to me anymore. Nell would go anyway.

''I'll be back'', Nell once said to Abigail before leaving. ''Are they okay, dear?'' ''Of course they are!'' Nell smiled and Olivia blew out a breath in the face of her daughter's sweetness. Hugh did the rest, but not for long. Olivia was nurtured enough for them to live their lives and be satisfied with her husband and daughter. They did everything and sacrificed themselves in honor of their memories. 

Nell took care of them too. She always did. And then she went and she wouldn't regret it.


	2. Another haunt and so many stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve travels through Chicago at the Nell company, where other stories reside there.

Chicago was not a city for them. It wasn't Los Angeles, Massachusetts or Hill House. It was small, compressed and noisy. When he disembarked she was there and all the way in the taxi to the hotel, covering her ears as everything passed by them. That city screamed with the daily life of those who thought big, of the buildings close to the immensity of the sky and with many things happening at the same time. Chicago knew how to make you feel small.

Once Hill House already did, and even more with her. She was once a little girl who felt even smaller than any home she has ever been to. But only the two knew it. Let Steve be enchanted by the immensity of the city. Let him think about it too, that nothing would beat (his) home in a matter of looking like a wild animal swallowing a small creature. Nell could feel the lightness in his mind when he came to accept believing. She would say she was proud, that she missed him so much and was doing well. He wished strongly that, behind a guilt he still carried, he knew it. 

She followed him to the hotel. I was with him and at the same time at Hill House in a fine, strong line, as a reminder, no matter how much time I spent there or how Chicago could mesmerize. Hill House was also noisy when she arrived and charmed her for a long time. There she can feel many things too. No matter how much time passed, and if Steve could feel it too or if he already felt his whole life behind his denial, how much time he spent away. He was like the last time. It looked like the change was just inside him, but when was the last time for him? Many months, years? What would he do if he saw you there? And what was he really about to do? 

Nell wouldn't be able to answer why he was there, if he asked. But there was a reason why she didn't know him and saw him on the first day in Chicago. That night, she understood better, when her conscience was there and thought of following him for dinner with his agents. "If you are open, of course, seeing your ability to write this type of story, this is a good opportunity". Nell heard of his agent several times, because he was clearly on the back foot. He told about everything, described what other writers said, about cases that have already happened and Steve told about a certain photo, when he research in the internet about the case, and found it funny. "Shakespeare? Why is there a reference to Shakespeare so specifically?" Nell didn't understand. 

"As successful as Hill House, who knows more. Believe me, this legend has a lot of history. Do you have any idea what it was like a few years ago?" 

"I really have no idea. Other things happened to me in 1992" 

And even after dinner, Nell continued to feel uneasy about her and Steve. He took Shirley's calls and made sure he was okay and everything was normal. "Maybe it's not a bad idea to try fiction." Then he called Leigh, still anxious, and she was explicitly uneasy, telling him what they had talked about and how he was doing. "There's a lot more than it seemed, personally speaking... Doesn't seem right i do this. These stories have marked many people and I am not comfortable to tell them... "

"Yeah, I don't think too" she agreed. "But I really wanted to know what Shakespeare means in this situation." Leigh laughed without understanding. 

He went to bed after hanging up, while Nell, all night, stared out at the city through the huge window that made the room seem more expensive than it looked, listening to people below and staring at the tied horizon of buildings wherever he went. look. There were many stories, condensed in every inch and coming and going every day, huddled together. Some gave up and others gained their own brilliance, continuing the fast and almost immortal pace that cities like this one had. In the midst of so much belief, she could see a thread running around the streets in different ways. Passing by, she realized hours later, more than a thread, but an extensive and varied chain for each one. Structurally camouflaged in the daily lives of those thousands of people as a haunt. It could have been because of rumors spreading by word of mouth, an accident full of coincidences and similar means, the buzz that certain people heard and believed, so many cases intertwined by this chain because of an element that kept them alive , all among a hive that has been humming for centuries in a shadow that describes anguish. 

She was there for that. For a legend that was not, in practice, a legend. Hill House had local stories and legends, but forgotten and erected on the hills in a peaceful city, while the silence lay solemn and deceptive for anyone who thought he was alone. There, she and some of the living were sure, they were not completely alone. No one was really alone. 

Steve caught a glimpse of her the next morning. She turned around and found herself staring at her brother, watching her standing in the window like she was for hours without realizing it, before disappearing seconds later and making her appearance more like a daydream, even though he doesn't have so much reason to believe in that. It wasn't as easy as it was with Luke. His skepticism took a huge fall, but interacting was more... complicated. She was unable to orbit near him in the morning, but she returned in time to be his company. She stayed with him in the taxi, leaning against the window where she realized that the chain was holding steady and unique. She listened, so loudly. So much faith and belief. Did she sound like that or was it something unique to the legend? Perhaps they are different, because Hill House was not like that. Things were always like this for her when she was alive, but she didn't realize? No, the answer was no. The state she was in, undead, spectral, things became clearer and sometimes they confused her. It was natural because death was, even for one that did not come naturally, or caused by a hungry and insane home. She spends days, but it doesn't matter because it seems like hours, in a playful and eternal dream, dancing and at tea parties on her own wishes, but aware of everything that happened while other residents, including her mother, did not have that remnant of sanity before I die. Nell needed to restrain himself, he couldn't be in a deceptive lucidity when something didn't seem right and his brother was there, going to a well-known neighborhood. 

They arrived in Cabrini Green after what seemed like hours to her this time. 

And Steve was not at all interested in pursuing the idea of studying that place. Curious? For sure. That was why we sought to know these stories, but he would not be involved in that one. Out of pure instinct, it may be from your skepticism or from your newborn belief, and out of pure self-awareness that you were not able to tell it because it is not his and does not represent you. There were other contexts besides what he thought when he was told that he would have a chance to command him, they were supernatural and social. But of course he was not going mainly because of the new reality that hit him after he returned to Hill House and was in charge of keeping the doors closed on the outside while she and her father kept them on the inside. But it was not enough to stop him from going to Cabrini-Green and arousing a little spark of curiosity. 

She had been looking at buildings for so long that she didn't notice Steve entering one. I wasn't sure how long he was there after getting out of the taxi and when he started walking to a specific building. She had time to see him enter and reach him in time as she had time to realize that it was the same as in the dream. Nell looked ate Steve and followed, confuse and don't understand what he want to do. 

Steve went up the stairs with colored walls, running his eyes as he climbed his paintings. At that moment, she didn't realize what was really around her. It was quiet, there should be almost nobody living there. Nell followed his gaze to the wall, which made his brother smile a little, but uncomfortably. A graffiti that covered most of the wall and through the doors made colors much more vivid at the time they were made. Sweets to the Sweet... They spent many seconds seeing the phrase. She could even laugh, so could he. Without a convincing reason. 

She looked at him. He didn't see her. He took out his cell phone in his overcoat and went back to the stairs, going downstairs and waiting for Leigh to answer. "I just called to ask how you are doing."

No, you are afraid. You called because you knew you shouldn't be there, and both Leigh and Nell knew you well to see that. 

When they returned outside, she observed the immensity of the empty neighborhood of the housing estate. Not many years ago even the police came close and now it was full and rebuilt, but people still didn't come. Many things happened to arrive where it arrived, and much more for a specific building to be the least inhabited. Steve was on a bench, exposed to the cold wind and any ideas that came to him. 

There was something in that place, marked on those walls and behind those buildings. Steve was able to deduce what it was a long time ago, wasn't that what he did with Hill House? Use science instead of a belief, let yourself be denied in order not to fall into the madness that you believed was in your family and break up what you still had, in exchange for the loneliness and anger that started to affect you in the end to come to blame, when the truth is in his eyes in the form of his sister he loved, in his father who was not crazy, in the mother he lost and in a house with many other stories. But he was not entirely alone and there was still redemption. If Steve Crain didn't know about it, he would even consider, still not accepting in the end, telling about the Candyman. "I don't do that anymore" 

Nell looked at him and smiled, even if it wasn't for her. Or maybe, if a part of him that remembered Shirley's dream, the legend and what the family was like, was for them and for anything that haunted them thinking it was the first. The Crains have already had a lot to haunt. 

She wanted to hold his hand, but she was content to stand beside him, smiling with genuine happiness that she insisted on while drinking from the cup of stars at tea parties. While what lived there watched them and at the same time watched everything. 

His agent wanted to meet him there before they went to see another writer. They exchanged a few words until they got out of there in his car. They went to meet another man that Steve recognized. Nell listened from a distance. They exchanged a few words until they agreed to go to another busier place. They made a reservation at a restaurant. She saw Steve thank and talk about his future projects and hear praise for his greatest success The Haunted of Hill House. 

But there was no future there for Steve. They are things like that that became a consequence of that night. A hunch, a Shirley dream and a sufficiently haunted past. Its just wait until Steve, with all the words, recuse that project. 

And then Nell looked back, where the housing estate didn't seem that far, starting to walk the entire route they came against. For the huge building that in a lucid dream was equipped with bees, she stopped and stared. Something inside liked those stories told in many ways. As in the legend it said and she heard for Steve. The ashes poured over where the neighborhood was now. A brutal attack on a demolished public toilet. Gangs and crimes with the same suspect. The abandoned building of typical Chicago size. He rose arrogantly from afar and swallowed his sight face to face. Of course, this was different. But different from Hill House too. 

Nell took a step, then another. She had her own haunted place that had already taken her.

Hill House was waiting for them all but only got it. Nell always had an attraction that now, when he still had the sanity to understand what happened in the last mortal seconds, he could clearly understand the time and what that building could do. So, what kind of attraction was attracting her to that building?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all enjoyed <3<3


	3. The hideout

Perhaps Nell was so confident that he allowed his curiosity to work for her to get there. Maybe because she was already dead? Because his curious soul wandered in unfamiliar directions? Was it in that morbid curiosity that she went Home and let it consume your mind? And was he accompanying her even after death? Why not? 

That building was the most untouched, obviously. 

She climbed the stairs open to a new surprise that Steve didn't see. Your feet decided for you when to stop. They stopped on the same floor as she had been before. The last time they were there, daylight appeared stippled across the floor by the coated windows and illuminated some of the graffiti on the opposite wall. Nell walked past them feeling like an art museum and laughed when he looked again at Shakespeare's sudden quote, but perhaps nervous. 

She had the strong impression that no one lived on that floor, nor on the others. The only souls there could be children or vandals. A perfectly haunted place to keep people away and attract those who were attracted. She entered the apartment at the end of the hall. Dusty, peeled and full of crumbs from those who have passed there: stale cigarettes, shiny candy paper and garbage. Strolling over them, Nell went to the bathroom, where she supposed to be the source of everything. A beautiful place to start a legend. Better than that was the iconic artifact. 

Standing in front of the mirror in a bathroom in an abandoned apartment, Nell finally saw the madness. But far from believing. And laughed again. She touched the mirror that barely reflected her reflection and opened it, an old Nell habit alive when taking her daily medicine. She remembered what Steve found out and spoke to Shirley. There was a hole-shaped passage that led to a place that Nell was about to enter. She felt like a child crawling through a toy tunnel as if it were the most fun thing in the world. Nell waited for his eyes to get used to the low light until he started walking without a proper direction. 

She walked through that room in a mixture of charm and curiosity, as if underestimating the darkness and abandonment that the place, at first sight, exhibited. She really had no reason to disbelieve. There was more there that also brought her a yearning and a twinge of danger that grew and showed her weight, until her steps became less light and she realized the presence that was watching her in her own dream of contemplation and familiarity. Sometimes walking, sometimes dancing, dodging obstacles, but without taking your eyes off the walls. 

She passed several times through the reflection of a dusty mirror, in paintings and graffiti that illustrated the walls in memories, beliefs and in historical pain. They had their own art. No. Not just an art. A story, that came from that place, that proudly worships that neighborhood and spread in whispers. It was a story that said a lot to those who represented it and to those who haunted it, it emerged in art, in isolated places, in an oppression that still persists and that he suffered, told on the walls. Behind the artistic talent and renown he gained with his works, there was strength. In a period that equality was far from being like today, a black man came to a tragic end by becoming involved with a white woman. They put a hook after amputating his hand, the hand he painted with, and was stung by the bees until he died. But he was still there. He was always there.

There are things that Nell, even in his postmortem, would not understand. She could only hear how different it was for certain people and regret the pain of something she never felt, because she was far from feeling it. 

At one point, she stopped in front of the mirror, when her soul felt compassion. She was surprised to see herself, if ghosts could be reflected outside the House. In the mirror, her dress seemed to have no color, that was not how it was before, her eyes were vague even focused on the same time, lost in her own confetti, and her skin and face, terribly pale and discolored as a decrepit that Undertaker would guess there would be a lot of dreams and imagination if she were alive, but Shirley knew from experience. His neck was bent. In less than a second she saw herself as her own astonishment that had plagued her since childhood. 

She blinked her eyes and the next second she was like the last time she saw herself in the mirror. It looked, partially, alive, the dress with a pastel color, soft and given to him with affection in spite of everything, and the head in its natural angle. But, of course, there was nothing really natural about her. Not there.

This was not Hill House.

"And I can see you" 

That's what Nell said before thinking when he saw an outline in the reflection and looked back. There was someone, but she didn't see him and was at her place. As soon as the quick presence came, he regretted using that tone of voice in the place that belonged to him.

Suddenly she felt the cold eating away from nowhere. She felt herself waking up, seeing how great and sacred she was, the weight of her presence there, intrusive, in his space, and how she should understand it. In her experience, she should have known better. "I'm really sorry".

She remembered speaking and going back where she came from. She was used to not receiving an answer and still feeling a presence. Hill House had more residents than you could count. But there... She just didn't know. She was too far away from her home to be sure she understood where she was. She just felt a strong fear in her chest. She could even say that she almost felt alive, because Nell alive felt constantly scared and sensitive. It scared her for a moment, too, but she had to remember. Ghost can be a lot of things. 

Nell managed to find the small passage, less by mere intuition, but by a disturbing meeting place not seen before. She stopped, staring at what was behind her all this time while letting her mind get lost in herself and everything she saw there. A huge mouth had poured out and a pair of eyes were watching her. A head drawn around the door and rising imposingly, opening its mouth forever and swallowing whoever entered its place of devotion and fear. Welcome. Its spectrum twitched. 

She wasn't sure how it could upset her. The way his mouth stayed open, the surprise that it was looking at her after he entered, or the idea behind it. Which was? There were so many that she thought of the minutes, that in her head it seemed like mere minutes when in fact hours and hours passed, while contemplating a work she never saw as devout and terrifying as that in places beyond that. In versions and words so different, but all belonging to a congregation that spread from there, like a house shatters into a small stain of mold when it spreads all over your body until it is rotten and lost in itself. 

She looked into the dark eyes. They looked back, eternally drawn as he waited, a little defiantly, to swallow her back. If they could say anything, they would speak of the consequences, of a vengeance, a melancholy and a grudge that emerged in a fear past in his legend that has been feeding him for a long time.

He was above her, in front of him, and he was also behind. He was with her during the hours that she was static, so out of reality around him that he remained very close, staring and admiring, sometimes holding his breath and other times that she didn't even focus on the figure anymore. I was too absorbed to realize that there was something behind her, loud and with a hook very close to her, but still with the image in front of her eyes, slowly turning her charm and listening, very low in her ears and too lucid to do it. touch it, take a deep breath.

Nell would understand better later, she was good at understanding things. He was everywhere and realized too late.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all like. Thanks for you reading <3


End file.
